How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter.
BERNARD MALAMUDWriters who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
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Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.
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You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
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Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
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The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.
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No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
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The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
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Life is a tragedy full of joy.
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The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
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(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
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A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
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I fix what’s broken – except in the heart.
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A man had to learn, it was his nature.
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We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
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We can’t all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.
BERNARD MALAMUD